“That creates rather a situation,” said Solly.

“If I’m to be captain of music I must be allowed to pick my own team.”

“Yes; I see that, of course.”

“And you also see, if I mistake not, that you will have a terrible row with Mrs Forrester, and another with old Snairey. Let me give you a piece of advice, Bridgetower; don’t borrow trouble. To a surprising extent trouble is a thing one can allow other people to have, if one doesn’t throw oneself in its path. You have already the harried look of a man who regards himself as the Lamb of God who takes upon him the sins of the whole world. That’s silly. Now let me tell you what to do: go back to Mrs Forrester and tell her—in front of witnesses, mind—that I’ll do it, but I won’t have Snairey. Then let her deal with Snairey. He’s senile, anyhow. Promise him a couple of seats for the play and he’ll be all right. Pass the buck. It’s the secret of life. You can’t fight every battle and dry every tear. Whenever you’re dealing with something that you don’t really care about, pass the buck. You’ve got me to do your music; that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Very well then, let Mrs Forrester clean up the mess.”

He turned again to the keyboard, and began to improvise very rapidly in the manner of Handel, singing the words “Pass the buck” in a bewildering variety of rhythms and intonations. Solly, sensing that the interview was over, left the house, and for some distance down the street he could hear the extemporaneous cantata, for piano and solo voice, on the theme “Pass the buck”.

Solly gave Nellie Cobbler’s message, in front of witnesses as he had been told to do, at the very next rehearsal; he chose a moment when she was already distracted by other worries, said his say, and hurried off to attend to something else. He felt that he was behaving meanly, but comforted himself with the assurance that in certain complex situations perfect honour and fair dealing were out of the question. And he had, indeed, enough to worry him. Larry Pye, who had not read The Tempest, was discovering from the rehearsals which he occasionally overheard that there were magical devices in the play which he was expected to supply. His technique in meeting this problem was in the best Cobbler tradition of passing the buck. “You plan ‘em, and I’ll make ‘em,” said he, and Valentine had asked Solly, as her assistant, to see what he could do.

Solly’s first move when confronted with a problem was to seek help from books. The Waverley Library, he discovered, was fairly well stocked with books about magic as anthropologists understand the word, and it could provide him with plenty of material about medieval sorcery; it also contained books by Aleister Crowley and the Rev. Montague Summers which assured him feverishly that there was plenty of magic in the world today. But of practical illusion it yielded only The Boy’s Book of Magic and two books by Professor Louis Hoffmann, who wrote about card tricks in an intolerably facetious style and obscured his already obscure explanations still further with Latin quotations and badly drawn diagrams. After two days of poring over these works Solly reported to Valentine that Shakespeare’s blithe direction “with a quaint device the table vanishes” was still impossible of realization by any means which he could discover.

“Oh, never mind then,” said she; “we’ll just use the old pantomime tipover trick. It is really the simplest when it’s well done. I merely thought you might find something better.”

So she had known a way of doing it all the time! For five minutes Solly was convinced that he hated Valentine.

He could not hate her for long, however. He was compelled, many times at each rehearsal, to admire the firmness, the good humour, the speed without haste, the practical knowledge of the stage, and the imagination which she applied to the task of training the actors of the Salterton Theatre to do what they had never done, or dreamed of doing, before in their lives. She very soon discovered what each actor might reasonably be expected to give, and then set to work to make sure that he gave it all. It was she who revealed to the world, and to Mr Leakey himself, that Mr Leakey could be quite funny if he didn’t try to be his very funniest. It was she who found out that Mr Shortreed had a large bass voice, and could outroar Professor Vambrace. It was she who demonstrated that The Torso, having once been made to cry, could stand perfectly still on the stage and look unexpectedly distinguished as well as merely pretty. And it was she who allowed it to be seen, tactlessly, in Nellie’s opinion, that Griselda Webster was a slacker, unwilling to make a sustained effort.

It was she, moreover, who dealt with the difficult problem created by Mrs Crundale. This lady might have been an artist of some attainment if she had not married Mr Crundale, and devoted her best efforts to furthering his career as a bank manager. The costumes which she designed for The Tempest were charming and imaginative. It was true that all the Reapers were expected to reveal a great deal more muscular shoulder and leg than they were likely to possess, and that costumes which she had designed for emaciated people seven feet tall had to be adapted for plump people considerably shorter after the casting had been done. But this was not the crux of the problem presented by Mrs Crundale. The crux was simply that she had designed costumes for Ariel, all the goddesses and the Nymphs which required that their bosoms be bare, not partly or fleetingly, but completely and indeed aggressively. She had shown these designs to almost everyone connected with the play and everyone had obediently admired them, while wondering what was to be done.

Mrs Crundale’s position was clear, and had been clear for years. She was an Artist, and to her the human body was simply a Mass, with a variety of Planes; twelve years ago she had explained this thoroughly after a nice-looking rugby player from Waverley had spiritedly declined her invitation to pose for a portrait in the nude. Nobody connected with the Little Theatre quite liked to explain to Mrs Crundale that the breasts of several well-known young ladies of Salterton, though undoubtedly Planes, had other connotations, and could not fittingly be unveiled at a public performance. But Valentine did so.

“These dresses will look charming when they are standing still, Mrs Crundale,” said she, “but when the girls dance your line will be completely spoiled. I suggest that you revise these slightly, giving some concealment for a strapless brassiere underneath.”

And Mrs Crundale, who had really only wanted to make the point that the human body was nothing to her but an arrangement of planes, agreed without a murmur. Devoted, tireless little Mrs Hawes, who was head of the costume-making committee, assured Valentine that because of this backing-up on the part of Mrs Crundale, she was able to breathe easily for the first time in many weeks. She had, she explained, dreaded the fittings.

Valentine showed herself no less able in her handling of intangible problems than in her swift settlement of the question of Mrs Crundale’s unworldly designs. Solly was deputed, like assistant directors everywhere, to deal with a variety of matters of bothersome detail, and he revealed a genius for complicating and fantasticating all details. Instructed to look after the furnishing and decoration of the vanishing banquet table he worked busily with a group of assistants, and created a pleasant but confusing mass of gilded ewers, plates of exotic fruits, flasks of wine in colours no vintner would have recognized, and monstrous edibles which suggested that every guest was to be served with a whole wedding cake; this feast, spread upon a cloth which had been painted and gilded to the last inch, was widely admired by all except the actors who had to carry it. They were wearing fantastic masks, made by a young woman whom Solly had encouraged to do her uttermost, and they complained that they could not see. One of them, a Waverley lecturer in economics whose devotion to the drama was limited to murder plays and farces, declared that if he were expected to wear a lion mask, and carry a peacock in its pride at the same time, he would withdraw from the whole affair. Solly was aggrieved.